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JayMerill
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been living for so long was
getting increasingly hard
to maintain. I felt more
threatenedbythepresence
of my housemates than
I used to and couldn’t
help wondering whether
the smile itself was the
cause of the trouble. Had
it lost its charm? Then
I saw at once I wasn’t
starting off on the right
track. Because the smile
was part of what I am, not
some superimposed print.
Though that’s exactly what
I’d tried to force it to be.
I had to face the fact that
seeing my smile as just an
empty screen that could
be scrolled down at will
so as to fool people was a
false picture. Perhaps this
way of looking at things
had been my greatest
weakness. Oh, the dangers
of deception! I aimed at
deceiving others, which
in itself was bad enough,
but in reality all that I’d
succeeded in doing was
deceiving myself.
I’d got into all this smiling
as a means of self-
protection. Because one
thing I really have never
been able to stomach
was the way these house-
sharers thought of me.
I could just see the word
poor
rolling around in their
brains in the same way
their eyes rolled around
in their heads sometimes
when they looked at me.
If we happened to meet in
the hallway for instance,
when they hadn’t been
expecting to see me there
because I moved around so
quietly. My very quietness
unnerved them, I knew
that. And I could almost
hear them say:
It’s as if
he’s a ghost. Poor thing
.
Glea and Aggie-Girl were